“Ah, you assume I care enough to hate.” Cared enough to hate… what was that line about love and hate being the same emotion just different sides of the coin? I loved her. I always would even if she was any good for me. Exercising her from my life like the demon I knew she could be would never happen. She was in my blood. My soul and there was no escaping from that.
“Don’t you?”
“Hate is a fine line to love, Sierra. I stopped loving you a long time ago when I realized you didn’t want my love.” The words are painful coming from my lips and her eyes widened. A gasp formed a small O around her mouth and her cheek ticked heavy with unexpressed emotion. Meanness wasn’t in me but I had to cut her out like the lingering cancer she’d been eating away at my sanity.
“I see. So you’re going to punish me instead?” She turned away to look over the balcony.
“Sorry, you must be seeing the face that doesn’t love you anymore.” I moved to brush past her, our shoulders bumping.
“Seriously, Andy?”
I shot her a look over my shoulder.
“Come on, it’s not like you were planning on staying here anyway and now that the vineyard is sold there’s nothing left for you here.” She turned away and I watched her back stiffen. My words had hit the intended mark but I didn’t feel any better about it. How could I? The day she left my world fell apart and I’d been running on auto pilot ever since.
“You would think that wouldn’t you.” Her quiet words were hushed and carried on the breeze.
“Take the money and leave. Start somewhere fresh.” The settlement I made for the vineyard was generous. Even in severing my ties to her I simply could not let this girl go.
“A place with no past.” She shrugged her shoulders and turned to look at me with her fathomless whiskey hued eyes. I drowned in her. It was impossible not.
My hands settled on her shoulders, my fingers tracing her bones. Cold and boney her frailness was visible under my fingertips and that scratching over the muscle of my heart started up again like a record skipping songs. I had to be strong. I had to let her go.
“A place where you can make the future.” I didn’t want the end to be so near, but there was no stopping it and every turn brought me closer and closer knowing her less and less.
“I’m stuck in limbo, Andrew. I don’t know how to move on as well as you do.” Sierra didn’t know I was stuck in limbo too. A decade in limbo and I was no better than she was. I faked moving on. I fooled my family, my brother, and my friends. I fooled myself for the last ten years into thinking I could ever let her go.
“It’s easy, you put one foot in front of the other.” I whispered the biggest lie I ever told. If Pastor Rooney could hear me, I’d be going to Hell. Luckily, he didn’t take confessional, but all those years going to church with my pa
rents after she left… well his judgement could be felt clear into the following week after one of his blistering sermons.
Sierra turned in my arms, her hands resting on my chest. It felt right. For the first time it felt right. I should have been putting the brakes on this, fuck, I should have been doing a lot of things including, but not limited to staying the hell away from Sierra Occho.
Our foreheads touched and I wanted her however she would have me. I was willing to settle for scraps, I’d cut my arm off if it meant having her even for this moment only. This would be my last attempt at extricating her from my body at the most basic cellular level.
“Andrew, we shouldn’t.” She was right. Her little tongue darted out moistening her lips and wavered.
“Since when have we ever done anything we were supposed to do firefly?” I got a crack of a smile from her and leaned on it. My lips touched hers and it was fire and ice simultaneously. Suddenly, I was that ship sailing the sea and then I was instantly battered in the storm tossed into the waves and swallowed whole. I was Capitan Ahab and she was my whale. I had no anchor, no lighthouse to guide me, and no direction except that damn broken compass that led me back to her each time.
Our tongues touched and I was eighteen again. So stupid and cocksure knowing it would be worth the pain this one last time. I was deluded into thinking I fix everything when I knew nothing at all.
“Put your arms around me. You’re home.” I said never wanting to let her go.
Sierra made a snuffling sound into my neck and my hands splayed against her back keeping her close and flush against my chest. I wanted to absorb her into me and never let go. I went down with her ship once before, and it didn’t kill me. What the hell was one more try?
“Is this real,” she asked trembling.
“As real as it ever was.”
Our clothes fell away with none of the shyness despite years apart. She was still bone thin but her body gained curves only time could make and grooves made by harsh living and experiences I couldn’t begin to understand. Vibrant tattoos covered scars I didn’t have the courage to ask about. Not sure I ever wanted too.
“Condom?” She husked between buttons and zippers. I followed her lead and pulled one from the drawer handing it to her assuming she knew how to use it. The thought made acid bubble in my stomach but better safe than sorry because God only knew what I missed in the years apart. We’d never used them before, but we were stupid then, sadly intelligence came with a plethora of history between us, stacked against us.
She opened the foil packet and with a practice I couldn’t bring myself to watch, I felt her align it over my shaft and roll it down squeezing me tight and rubbing against her clit. I blocked out the jealous thoughts of other who had been here after me and before today. Right in this second was the only moment I was giving us right now.
“Sierra, baby.” I pulled her hips into mine and her body circled rubbing against me. It was irresistible and my cock jolted against her wet center. No matter what, we always fit and I pressed forward inching into her with the intent to go slow, be careful with my girl, but maybe that was my problem. I treated her with kid gloves and what she craved was a pressure and a wave that crashed into her and forced her to examine who she really was outside the definition of before.
“Harder.” Her nails scrapped against my back stinging against the air conditioning and I seated myself fully inside her, balls slapping her ass and breathless groans.